Abstract

Short-pulse multiwavelength laser ranging systems have been proposed to measure atmospheric pressure over the oceans (1). Recently, such systems also have been shown to be capable of accurately measuring ocean waveheight and wavelength (2,3). In our companion paper (4), the ocean reflected laser returns are calculated to have sharp features which are characteristic of the ocean surface depth profile, transmitter beam divergence and angle-of-incidence. These features are expected to be well correlated at both received wavelengths if the reflecting specular points are much larger than an optical wavelength, and if the average depth difference between successive points is larger than the transmitter pulse width.

© 1983 Optical Society of America